


Ice Cream

by Cluegirl



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-30
Updated: 2010-07-30
Packaged: 2017-10-10 21:01:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/104244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cluegirl/pseuds/Cluegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Severus Snape has never tasted ice cream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ice Cream

Severus Snape has never tasted ice cream.

No, not even once.

Strange thing to say about a thirty-eight year old man, but perhaps not so surprising when this particular thirty-eight years are weighed in.

Before the age of eleven, he'd never heard of such a thing and had it been offered him, would have regarded it with suspicion. Food was not a frivolous thing, and certainly not a foolishly indulgent mass of dripping goo. Food was something you ate with gratitude, no matter how tasteless or scant.

_White and rose-pale. Cool and wet against his lips. Melting over his tongue. Sweetness redolent with the aftertastes of vanilla and strawberries. He breathes through his nose, swallows convulsively, then drives his tongue deeper with a helpless groan._

Then at school, when faced with the popular delights of Fortean Fortescue's emporium of spoiled appetites, Severus found himself burdened by a consistent absence of money, and a fierce loathing for anything resembling charity. Let the others gorge themselves with the mess, flirt and coo over lumbering mountains of candy-coloured slime, or commit acts of public indecency with dripping cones. He would spend his time (along with whatever coin he could manage to scrape up, thank you) at Flourish &amp; Blotts. At least he'd have something more to show for his time and money at the end of the day than a bellyache and a collection of new spots.

_The texture against his tongue is unbelievably smooth, spreading out like sugar and cream across his palate, turning the desperate noise in his throat from a groan to a gurgle. He fights the urge to clutch, knowing he would only feel the moment sliding icily through his fingers, dripping away to sticky regret at his feet. He does not dare risk it. _

And of course the years that followed his leaving school held no room for sweetness. That time was blood flavored through and through, till the reek of bubotuber and shrivelfig, sulfur and niffler-spleen became his only hope for overpowering it. Sweet things were entirely too fragile for those times.

_How can it stay so cool? His face is burning, sweat prickling along his scalp, blood singing in his ears, heating his lips and cheeks until he can feel them blazing. But the gentle invasive glide remains unruffled, faintly sticky, and so. Very. Sweet. He takes another lick, and finds the ghost of chocolate past whispering in the back of his throat. Merlin's grace, how can it still be so cool?_

And now, under Dumbledore's lemon-flavored thumb, the scorn for candy and puddings and all things sugary has become nothing less than the manifestation of Severus's identity. He is a creature of bitterness and complexity, he is sour in humour and sharp in amusements, blazing hot in anger, and stinging with spice in the secret pursuits of the bedchamber. Sweetness is something that happens to other people. Like Ice Cream.

_Like this child, soft and pliant against him, with skin like milky vanilla, and bitten-cherry lips. Hair drifting in a silken caress across his brow, white just-kissed with a breath of butterscotch gold that deepens to caramel where sweat darkens the pale strands. These hands, this touch -- soft and sure, dribbling along his bared throat, his face, mapping his chest and trembling stomach. Snape is certain if he looks, he'll find sticky tracks of melted bliss in their wake.   
His robe will want washing._

Draco shifts restless in his lap, needily pressing himself where he has no business being, and then refusing to be still once he's there.

_His robe will want washing very, very soon._

The lips, _cool, plump, sweet -- Merlin, how very sweet_ pull away with a smacking sound, and the boy leans back, licking the sheen from his lips with a strawberry tongue before offering Snape a cheshire grin. This child -- _this CHILD_ is everything he has denied himself of sweetness and indulgence in his life. A trap spun of ice and creamy sweetness. A lure to the wasp he has become in his armored old age.

"I want to stay." The words gust against his ear, and they save him at last. For the accent is the same as that Other Malfoy. The one who is never sweet except to wound, the one who taught him how easily wasps can be trapped with a little sugar and a jar.

He tightens his hands, feeling the moment gush out between his fingers as he lifts the boy child off his lap and sets him on his feet. "Get back to your own room, Mr. Malfoy," he manages, all sulfur and toad bile and lank, greasy hair, "And do not assault me this manner again."

And there is that grin; that promise, that challenge, that dare. _Try and stop me!_ that grin says, even while its owner nods obediently and straightens his school jumper. Snape doesn't miss that Draco's white fingers wander down over the bulge of his trousers before twitching his robes closed again. "Of course, Sir," that curling voice says, and the boy tosses his head, flings an errant strand of hair back into place. "I'll see you in class tomorrow then?"

_Unless you plan to go blind tonight._ And were it anyone else, he would say it. But to Draco, he only nods and spells the door open.

Severus Snape has never tasted ice cream.  
And the potent chill lingering on his lips suggests that he probably never will.  
How could it possibly compare?


End file.
